One Last Goodbye
by pedomellonaminno
Summary: The universe is big, it's vast, and complicated, and ridiculous, and sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles.
1. Chapter 1

The TARDIS had refused to let the Doctor out when he'd landed the sentient time machine on the red surface of Mars, so he'd taken to strolling the corridors in agitation, looking for something to fix or fiddle with, something to occupy his over-active mind, as the TARDIS also refused to move. Turning a corner that had appeared out of nowhere, he almost ran into something highly unexpected: an old woman sitting on a chair that was pushed up against the corridor wall. Her grey hair was loose around her shoulders, and the skin that wasn't hidden by a long floral nightgown was covered in deep wrinkles.

"What?" the Doctor asked in shock, but not solely because of the sudden appearance of the woman on the TARDIS. (He understood, now, why the TARDIS had refused to do anything earlier.) No, it was the identity of the old woman that astonished him most. He hadn't seen her for a long time, and it had apparently been even longer for her, but that didn't stop him from recognising her instantly. She patted the seat of the chair next to her in an obvious invitation to sit, so he did so, still gaping at her.

"How can you be here?" he asked, his voice getting awfully close to the squeaky sound he'd carried over from his fifth body.

"I'm dying, Doctor," she replied, almost nonchalantly. "I thought I already had, but then I woke up here. I figured waiting here for you would be faster than me trying to find you, as I'm not particularly mobile any more, as you may have noticed. I'm glad I'm here, though, to say goodbye properly before I die."

"Oh, Rose," sighed the Doctor, not sure what was going on, exactly, or what to do about it.

"It means I've kept my promise, though," she continued. "I promised you forever. Of course, a lot of that forever was with another version of you, but here I am. My forever's almost up, and I'm going to spend the rest of it with you." Rose's voice was shaky with age, but still firm.

"You were happy, then, over there?" the Doctor asked as he entwined their fingers together as he had once done with extreme regularity. The skin of her hand was wrinkled, and the joints slightly knobby with age, but it still felt familiar.

"I was a bit mad at you at first that you'd left without a real goodbye, among other things, but when I'd slept on it and thought about it a little more logically, I though of how hard that must have been to do at all, and what you'd given up to give to me. We had a fantastic life, surrounded by family. We paid off our shared mortgage ages ago. When he got an odd kind of cancer, we were in our seventies, at least according to the paperwork, but he wasn't going to take it lying down, so he held on stubbornly for almost six years, which was about four years longer than the Torchwood doctors gave him. That was not quite two weeks ago, and I was following him quickly, of old age and heartache. But the universe has other ideas, apparently, and I get to say goodbye to this Doctor, too, before I go," she paused, thinking. "Could you take me to the control room so I can say a proper goodbye to the TARDIS, too?" As thin as the Doctor was, he had no trouble lifting Rose's elderly, frail frame and carrying her to the room they'd once spent hours at a time in, setting her gently on the jump seat and carefully sitting next to her, their hands still tightly clasped together.

"Goodbye, old girl," she said to the air in the general direction of the console. "If you had anything to do with this, then thank you." The Doctor grinned at his brilliant Rose, still deducing and being generally clever in her eighties.

"And even if you didn't," she continued. "Thank you for everything, when I was here before. I missed you almost as much as I missed your Spaceman here. He told me about that particular quirk of Donna's, among other things, " she said, the latter a reply to his raised eyebrow. "I liked it. So I called him that sometimes, to which he usually replied 'Earthgirl'." Rose closed her eyes, smiling.

"Rose?" he asked worriedly.

"'M still here," she murmured. "I don't know how much longer, though. I hurt everywhere, and my head is killin' me." The Doctor didn't know if she remembered saying those words, so long ago, but they started an idea forming in his head.

"Don't, Doctor," Rose interrupted his thoughts as though she knew what he was thinking. "I'm dying, not you. My time is running out, with just enough time for this one last adventure." She was silent for a moment, and then spoke again. "I love you. Always have. When I was with him, it was like another regeneration. I still loved this you, like I loved the leather-wearing, 'lots of planets have a North' version of you, but I loved my current Doctor the most. I'm not sure which Doctor you count as now, but I love you anyway, even if I haven't seen you this young for, oh, fifty years?"

The Doctor made a scoffing sound at being called young, especially by Rose Tyler, human.

"Oh, shut it," she protested weakly. "You know what I mean."

"Rose Tyler," he started. As he spoke, he half expected the cloister bell to start ringing or something, for the sole purpose of interrupting him, as so many thing had in the past. But nothing happened, so he spoke quickly after taking a deep breath. "Rose Tyler, I love you." He hugged her close, and kissed the top of her head softly. She sighed happily and squeezed his hand in hers as tight as she could.

Neither could think of anything more to say, but they were content to sit in each other's company for the unknown but limited time they had left together. The Doctor began to hum quietly, and Rose's attempt to join him turned into a funny breathy cough. He rubbed his free hand up and down her back soothingly, and turned his humming into a soft, untranslated Gallifreyan lullaby. When Rose's coughs subsided, she snuggled as close to him as she could to feel the vibration of his chest on her cheek and the beautifully lyrical language in her ear.

When Rose had promised him forever, this was the situation he had been dreading, the reason that seeing Sarah Jane again had been hard, even as he had enjoyed it, because the inevitability of a scene like this was harder to ignore. But as he held a dying Rose on his lap, knowing she'd lived a long, full life, loved and surrounded by family, it wasn't as terrifying as he'd feared. He'd had to accept the fact that this universe had to do without Rose, as much as he wanted to deny it, so this extra time was more precious than scary. But it didn't stop another part of his very complex brain from trying to do the impossible again and keep her with him, and another part trying to decide where she would liked to be buried.

His trains of thought were stopped momentarily when a series of coughs shook her whole body. He began to rock her back and forth like a small child and sung a little louder, the normally mechanical sounds of the TARDIS becoming the harmony to his melody. A small whimper escaped her lips, and he felt a tear begin to run down his cheek. Other tears followed softly as he couldn't do anything for her pain the way he usually had done when she'd been injured or otherwise hurting. When her breathing became irregular, his voice started to waver, but he kept singing to his precious girl to ease her out of life since he could not prevent her death.

"Don't go, Rose," he pleaded softly, unable to stop himself. "I don't want you to go." Her only response was another shallow, shaky breath and a squeeze of his hand. She wanted so badly to grant him this request, but his most heartfelt wish was one she couldn't grant. She took one more gasping breath before speaking her last words in a voice that was barely a whisper.

"_I love you, my Doctor."_

"I love you, Rose Tyler," the last of the Time Lords of Gallifrey said one more time as he mourned his beloved.


	2. Chapter 2

_She took one more gasping breath before speaking her last words in a voice that was barely a whisper: "____I love you, my Doctor."_

_"I love you, Rose Tyler," the last of the Time Lords of Gallifrey said one more time as he mourned his beloved._

But because the Doctor had closed his tear-filled eyes, he didn't notice the gold glowing around Rose's hands. He simply held her tighter, no longer having to worry about hurting her. But a sudden increase in her body temperature made him pull back and open his eyes. He pulled away from her completely when he saw the glow and retreated to a safe distance.

"Come on, Rose," he urged quietly, the words very nearly a prayer. He stopped breathing as the light got brighter and an infinitely long moment passed before she exploded right in front of him, as he had once done in front of her. The light made his eyes water, but he couldn't look away, so he just stared at her, grinning.

Just before he thought he might go permanently blind, or regenerate himself from anticipation, the golden light faded to nearly nothing, and he was left staring at the place Rose Tyler had been sitting. But because he was still blinking away the spots in his eyes, he was taken by surprise when a very, very familiar body slammed into his, and very, very familiar arms wrapped around him. His arms went around her, hugging her tightly to him before lifting her up and spinning her around, laughing. Her oh-so-familiar and dearly missed laugh joined his. When he could finally see through the afterimage of her regeneration, he stopped spinning Rose and put her back on her feet, drawing back just enough to be able to look at her.

"Be honest," she said. "How do I look?"

"Like Rose Tyler!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Blonde hair, brown eyes, all pink and yellow, if not entirely human anymore, but still 100% the Rose Tyler I know and love, and I know it's you, because who else could do something so impossible and come back and then just when I've accepted that there will be no more Rose in my life, you go and prove me wrong again. And that's brilliant! Fantastic, even! Molto bene! And as over the moon I am about it- humans have the oddest sayings, don't they? I've been over several moons before, and I was none of those times particularly happy or ecstatic about the fact that I was over a moon- but anyway, I can't help wondering _how._ How my very brilliant but very human Rose Tyler managed to not only come back, but then regenerate, which, as far as I have seen, is a solely Time Lord trait. I've seen several other, similar forms of self-preservation, but that was exactly like every Time Lord regeneration I've ever seen or experienced."

Rose decided to jump in there, in case he decided to describe them or something, and she'd had enough of regeneration for a long time.

"Doctor, Gallifreyans got the ability to regenerate-among other things- and became Time Lords from living close to the Untempered Schism, which was basically a crack that you could see the Time Vortex through. I had the whole Vortex running through my head. But I also had control of it, to some extent. I saw everything that had happened, everything that had to happen, and I planned around it. Donna needed a shock to get the Time Lord in her jump-started, on the Crucible, but I couldn't risk letting that happen to me before or while I was in Pete's World, so I locked it safely away in my head. Instead of instant Time Lord, which is what could have happened, I needed to live a completely human life, both in this universe and the other, so I delayed it then until the last possible moment now. Blimey, English is rubbish for describing things like that. So here's me, Human Time Lord, instead of Gallifreyan, but mostly the same other than planet of origin. Regeneration, obviously; two hearts beating out a samba in _my_ chest; and that not-needing-to-breathe thing you were always on about makes rambling on like I've got _your_ gob easier." Rose paused for a moment, ignoring the incredulous stare on the Doctor's face- which was difficult, as it wasn't one she saw often.

"Oh! I've just had another idea!" And with that, Rose stopped pacing back and forth in front of the console and ran the few steps back toward the Doctor. Instead of throwing her arms around him, as she usually did, she framed his face with her hands and closed her eyes. She reached, mentally, for the part of her newly-expanded brain that could feel the presence of the Doctor- at least, she assumed it was the Doctor, as she could only feel one Time Lord in her head- and imagined a Tardis-blue door between the two of them. She knocked on it.

_Hello?_ she imagined herself saying through the door. _It's me, Doctor. It's Rose. I'd like to come in, please, if you don't mind, 'cause I've heard it's lonely in there. _She wondered what, if any, social rules she was breaking, and if there was a better way to do what she was trying to do.

_It's just fine, Rose. That's probably the politest anyone's been to me in centuries, _was the Doctor's reply as the door opened and disappeared.

_What did you do to make such stuffy people dislike you?_

_Existed, basically. And never really did what I was told, unless I wanted to._

_That sounds a lot like you, you know, not following the rules._

_You're one to talk, Miss Impossible!_

_I do not think that word means what you think it means, _Rose quipped, remembering the several times they'd watched The Princess Bride._ We make quite a pair, you and I. You ignore most of the rules of the society with the most- and most complicated- rules, and I ignore the rules of the universe._

_Yes, about that. I'd love to know how you managed to come back._

_Bad Wolf, probably. And one slightly crazy- and by that I mean completely bonkers- Time Lord who decided that time was not the boss of him anymore, and so changed a fixed point in time. _Though her words were vague, it was obvious who she meant, as up to a few minutes prior, there had only been one Time Lord to do such a thing.

_And how do you know? I don't remember changing any fixed points. _That he'd wanted to, so very badly, to get her back, passed through his mind too quickly for her to notice it.

_All that is, all that was, all that could be, remember? It's nowhere near as clear as it was on Satellite 5, but that alternate timeline was a doozy. You ended up in Bowie Base One, right before it blew up and you decided that you were going to save people whose deaths were fixed, because you were the last of the Time Lords and you were the boss of time, not the other way around. The rant was rather impressive, even for you- if you ignore the fact that you were completely terrifying. So on Satellite 5, or maybe the TARDIS is just really clever, but either way the walls of reality were a little wobbly on account of fixed points being stopped. The walls being wibbly just happened to coincide with a time that I was really, really missing you- time was still ahead in the other universe- and I've had just a tiny bit of Huon energy in me since Satellite 5. It all added up to, how did you put it? With Donna? A fork in a mug? Something like that. And the TARDIS wouldn't let you out because I was here, thus you didn't go out there by yourself and end up changing a fixed point, so the walls are no longer wibbley wobbley, but I'm in this universe. _A grin blossomed on Rose's face so quickly and so naturally that it looked like it was the only expression she'd ever worn. The Doctor's grin was just as brilliant as hers, with just a bit of awe still lingering.

"Oh, my precious girl," he said aloud as he wrapped his arms around her. "Thank you for saving me again." She hugged him tighter as a reply, moving her hands down from his face to wrap her arms around his neck. They were silent as they clung to each other, re-memorizing the smell and the feel and the sound of the other.

"I love you," Rose whispered in his ear. The Doctor clasped her tighter, and spun her around so that she was giggling when he put her down and pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes.

"_I_ love _you_," he said, and then repeated it in the language that Rose had already been toying with the idea of having him teach her, so that he wouldn't be the only one to know it anymore. She may not have understood to words- yet- but their meaning was clear.

Her Doctor and his Rose sealed their promises with a kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

_Her Doctor and his Rose sealed their promises with a kiss._

Sometime later, Rose spoke quietly.

"We can save the people on the base without making everything go wibbly again."

The Doctor stared at Rose, looking directly into her eyes.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked with his mouth, but his eyes were screaming "How? How do I save them?" She answered his eyes, knowing they were the more honest.

"Nobody on Earth in 2059 can know they're alive, but that doesn't mean they have to die."

"Fancy another trip in the TARDIS, Rose Tyler?" he asked, grinning to outshine the sun, because that was so right, the Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS, and she always knew just what to say.

"Allons-y, then," she said with an answering grin and a nod of her head in the direction of the console. A few minutes later, she was watching him do the complicated dance that was his adaptation to piloting the TARDIS by himself, and made a mental note to ask him if he'd teach her to pilot- and not just hold down that lever or button, but properly pilot. What she didn't know was that he was make a note of his own to teach her and wondering why he hadn't before. The room shook, but much more gently than it usually did.

"We've only moved a couple miles in space, and not in time," the Doctor said in reply to a question she hadn't completely formed, because another one had occurred to her just then.

"Why do I still look like me?"

"I'd say that you regenerating changed you more inside than outside. Triple helix, two hearts, lower body temperature, respiratory bypass system, and so on. And there is some level of control over your appearance when you regenerate, like if you happen to be thinking really hard about the last time you looked twenty."

"Like if you've been hanging out with somebody from London, and her mum accuses you of being forty five?"

"Cheeky," he declared, and tapped the end of her nose with one finger before reaching down for her hand before pulling her toward the TARDIS doors.

***************  
Human beings, being what they are, don't always accept everything they're told as the truth, especially as the ones doing the telling had just come out of a blue box that appeared out of nowhere and had both, when asked, declared their names, ranks, and intentions to be the Doctor, doctor, and fun, one right after the other. So there was a bit of threatening, and questioning, and doubting before they even got to the 'run for your life' bit, but the three people they managed to save were three more people than history said survived. And watching those three people stare around their surroundings, holding the Doctor's hand, was much better without any Time Lord Victorious thrown in. They left the humans- Rose flinched a little when she remembered she was no longer included in that group, and what her mother had said before the ghosts-that-weren't-ghosts- in the care of the magistrate of the 18th Lunar Colony, who owed them a favor, several centuries in their future, with instructions to call Rose if Saturn's moons weren't enough and they wanted something from 21st century Earth.

"So," Rose started as they drifted slowly within viewing distance of the Rosette Nebula, the TARDIS doors open and four Converse-clad feet hanging into open space. "New, new me. Since we've already established that I want to go, and that you'd love me to come, where are we going to go first?"

"That way," the Doctor said, pointing out some distant planet. "No, that way." Finally diverting from a conversation they were acting out from memory, the Doctor pointed in the completely opposite direction, back into the depths of the TARDIS. Rose had no doubt what as to what exactly he meant by that, and her answering smile would have outshone the stellar nursery, if either of them had remembered it was still there.

The Doctor and Rose Tyler danced to music only they could hear, for now and for ever.


End file.
